Best Sports Bar

Famous Sam's

Readers Pick

Long, long before there was a shiny, upscale sports bar in every strip mall, there was Famous Sam's. It had, and still has, everything you could want: TVs perpetually showing bodies in motion; a perfect pastrami and cheese sandwich; truly memorable fries; many choices on tap; fast, skinny waitresses in tight jeans; and that comfy stale beer smell that says, "Just finished unloading a couple train cars' worth of elephants? Damn. You must be thirsty." The first and best Sam's was, and is, on the northeast corner of Swan Road and 29th Street, just a hop and a skip from the gates of the airbase. There are now seven more Tucson Sam's, plus locations in Phoenix and elsewhere. The pastrami is that good.